The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months

by Brian P. Moran

How would your life change if each and every day you performed up to your full potential?

What if we surpassed our indvidual potential by collaborating?

This life isn’t driven by the you who settles or gives in to procrastination and doubt, but by the optimal you, the best you, the confident you, the healthy you.

In this book we will show you how to increase your current results by four times or more, in a very short period of time.

Execution is the single greatest market differentiator. Great companies and successful individuals execute better than their competition. The barrier standing between you and the life you are capable of living is a lack of consistent execution.

In The 12 Week Year, we will show you how to perform at your best and achieve the things in life that matter most to you through effective execution.

We have written The 12 Week Year to close the execution gap.

Part I will provide fresh insights regarding what it takes to be great and challenge what you think you know about what it takes to perform at your best and achieve your potential.

“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” —John Wooden

One of the things that gets in the way of individuals and organizations achieving their best is the annual planning process.

Most of them believed, either consciously or unconsciously, that their success and failure was determined by what they had achieved over the course of a year.

The trap is what we call annualized thinking.

At the heart of annualized thinking is an unspoken belief that there is plenty of time in the year to make things happen.

We lack a sense of urgency,

We need to be conscious of the reality that execution happens daily and weekly, not monthly or quarterly.

Stop thinking in terms of a year; instead focus on shorter time frames.

“There’s nothing like a deadline to get you motivated.”

Year-end is certainly a rousing time in most industries.

Tasks that are not directly related to driving results are pushed aside for what really matters in the short-term.

At this time of year there also seems to be an increase in performance-related conversations. Management, focused on achieving their own performance goals, spends more time with associates reviewing results and encouraging them more than at any other time of the year.

It is the deadline that creates the urgency.

Periodization began as an athletic training technique designed to dramatically improve performance.

Its principles are focus, concentration, and overload on a specific skill or discipline.

usually four to six weeks.

What will we focus on for the next 4-6 weeks? What will we focus on next?

We have developed a 12 week approach to periodization that moves beyond just training to focus on the critical factors that drive income and life balance.

It creates a sense of clarity regarding what is important, and a sense of urgency each day to do what is necessary.

If we had to priorItize which vital few were most important, which order would we execute them in, and how would they build upon one another?

Think about the implications of a 12 Week Year. The excitement, energy, and focus that happen every December now happen continuously.

It provides a time horizon that is long enough to get things done, yet short enough to create a sense of urgency and a bias for action. It’s human nature that we behave differently when a deadline approaches.

The 12 Week Year narrows your focus to the week and, more to the point, the day, which is where execution occurs.

It might be a three-day weekend or a weeklong vacation; the important thing is that you take time out to reflect, regroup, and reenergize.

Effective execution isn’t complicated, but it’s not necessarily easy, either.

to execute successfully it is essential to have a strong emotional stake in the outcome.

Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones.

What is our driving, compelling, why?

The secret to living your life to its potential is to value the important stuff above your own comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort, and then aligning your shorter term goals and plans, with that long-term vision.

What kind of goal would make is uncomfortable?

Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.

Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically.

it is actually your life vision that gives traction and relevance to your business.

It is your personal vision that creates an emotional connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business.

discomfort. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult.

it. If you find you’re lacking passion in either your business or in a relationship, it’s not a crisis of passion; it’s a crisis of vision.

The personal vision creates the foundation for an emotional link to your business and career objectives so that there is a strong alignment between what you pursue in your business and the life you desire to live.

Your business vision is most powerful when it is developed in light of your personal vision.

Once you understand the linkage between your life vision and your business success, you can define exactly what level of income or production your business must deliver in order to support your complete vision.

You have the ability to strengthen and develop your brain by thinking about a compelling future for yourself, by regularly and repeatedly thinking about an inspiring vision where you emotionally connect with the life you desire.

What is my compelling future?

Twelve week plans are both numbers- and activity-based.

There will always be more opportunities than you can effectively pursue. With the 12 Week Year, the approach is to be great at a few things instead of mediocre at many things.

In 12 week planning, you identify the top one to three things that will have the greatest impact, and pursue those with intensity.

The whole point of planning should be to help you identify and implement the critical few actions that you need to take to reach your goal.

However, the sad fact is that most plans are not written with implementation in mind.

To be excellent in execution we mist be excellent in documenting the plan of action. This may include using technology to increase transparency and accountability.

For example, if your 12 week goal is to earn $10,000 and lose 10 pounds, you should write tactics for your income goal and your weight loss goal separately. Tactics are the daily to-do’s that drive the attainment of your goals. Tactics must be specific, actionable, and include due dates and assigned responsibilities.

The 12 week plan is structured so that if the tactics are completed on a timely basis the goals are achieved.